Newbie attained lucid dream, but not for long...

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Hey all, when I was a kid I encountered lucid dreaming a few times. I had a few instances where I just realized, "Hey this is a dream" but I never tried to manipulate the dream or do anything spectacular. I've been a lurker here for a while and read up on techniques. I tried a few RC's in dreams that didn't work. I read one RC where you are supposed to try and make something change colors. I had a bad dream once where I tried to turn an inatimate object blue, but nothing happed..fortunately the circumstances were so crazy I knew it was a dream. My problem with my lucid dreams is I can't seem to hold on to them. Once I had a dream and realized it was a dream and flew in the air, once I was up there I was excited and tried doing too many things that weren't sucessful and ended up fading away (this ended up in a wbtb scenario which I was unsucessful at becoming lucid).

Since finding this site I've become lucid 4 times, my most recent ld was 2 days ago. I woke up in the morning early, went back to bed after an hour telling myself I was going to have an LD, I imagined the LD I wanted to have and ended up falling asleep then realizing I was dreaming. Once I became lucid I ran a few steps then jumped really high and flew through the ceiling, I remembered as I was flying to stay calm. I got up in the air and looked down, told myself to stay nice and calm then it faded away.

My LD's keep fading on me. One of my main problems is that I don't keep a dream jornal and I have a really hard time remembering dreams. I only remember a couple every few weeks. Even my LD's are very vague and blurry. RC's don't work for me, I usually just realize I'm dreaming... Why can't I control my LD's more? What can I do to help? Will keeping a dream journal really help? I'm in the military and have to wake up very early in the morning and usually have too much to do in the morning (having a family) to fool around with laying in bed and writing in a journal. Any advice? Tips? Thanks for your time. _Thunder

One more thing, I ALWAYS have the type of dreams where I'm in a fight and I hit some one with all my strength and end up just barely tapping the person, or I am running in slow motion. Its so aggrivating. Also when I'm LDing I can't help but try to do crazy stuff immediatly to make sure its a dream. I'd like to explore and do little things that people describe like making things levitate, walk through walls, talk to DC's...my first instinct is to jump up and fly...I think this makes my dreams fade faster...any tips on developing the skill to chill out and not try and do such big things? Like I said, it feels like an instinct. It feels so good when I first fly though!